Oh, wait now.
Yes! Yes!
There was one place Orange might go, one specific place, a place he would consider safe, a place he would feel certain no one outside his close circle of friends would know about—and surely not an unseen nemesis, underrating as he would the thoroughness, the tenacity of that enemy. A place he might go if he was no more than mildly suspicious, mildly worried, wanted only to take time to think things out; a place he might go even if he suspected nothing, wanted merely to escape the crush of a large city.
A logical place, under any circumstances.
A place called Duckblind Slough.
The limping man smiled grimly in the darkness. Should he wait any longer here? Decision: No. The more he thought of it, the more convinced he became that Orange might have gone, for one reason or another, to his small fishing cabin in Duckblind Slough, Petaluma River, Marin County. It would take him less than an hour to drive up there and find out, and if he was right, he could be on his way home sometime later this afternoon; peace at last, and perhaps a whore like Alice to share it with for a few hours. If he was wrong, he would call Orange’s number again; had he returned home by then, somehow, there would still be enough time before dawn to accomplish his mission. And if Orange was not at the cabin, and had not returned home . . . well, there was no use in looking at the darker prospects now. He could cross such a bridge if and when he came to it.
The limping man straightened on the seat, his hand flicking out to turn the key in the ignition and bring the quiet engine to life, to switch on the lights, the windshield wipers, the heater-defroster. Moments later, he took the car out onto the slick, deserted street. There was almost no traffic, but he drove with a certain degree of caution; the last thing he needed at this moment was a confrontation with a police traffic patrol.
When he reached the Golden Gate Bridge, however, he drove more rapidly; less than a half hour later, he made the turn off Highway 101 onto the narrow dirt road leading toward the Petaluma River. It was raining harder here, and the wind was north and very strong, causing the bordering trees to bow, as he drove beneath them, like subjects fawning at the passage of a royal carriage. He passed the Mira Monte Marina and Boat Launch and the trap-shooting club, the private property sign; he drove along the first private road until he reached the entrance to the second. Slowing as he made the turn, he switched off his headlights; when he had crossed the raised bank of the railroad spur tracks, he brought the Mustang to a silent stop at the padlocked wooden gate which barred the road at that point.
The limping man sat there for a moment, reconnoitering. Then he took the Ruger .44 Magnum from the briefcase on the seat beside him and put it into the pocket of his overcoat. He took the black pigskin gloves from the glove compartment, slipped them on, and stepped out into the wind and the rain.
He went directly to the gate, climbed it quickly and nimbly, the gloves protecting his hands from the sharp, rusted barbed wire strung across its top. He dropped down on the other side, pausing to rest his game leg, letting his eyes probe the black morass ahead. He could not see the shack from where he stood—it was better than a half-mile from the gate—but if there had been a light burning inside, he would have been able to discern it; the terrain was relatively flat, with no tall trees or shrubs to blot out any light. As it was, there was only darkness, full and absolute.
He put his right hand on the Ruger in his pocket and moved forward, walking swiftly along the muddied road, oblivious to the slanting rain which matted his thin hair to his scalp and ran in tiny tear-streams down along his face, oblivious to the pull of the icy, moaning wind.
It took him fifteen minutes to reach the circumscribed clearing which served as a parking area for the three fishing cabins in the slough. He saw the small, convex shape of a single automobile, standing like a wet and silent sentinel on the grassy, pooled clearing, and he thought: Volkswagen; Orange’s wife has a Volkswagen.
He approached the car quietly, sliding his canvas shoes—soaked through now—along the slippery, mired ground. At the rear bumper he squatted and peered at the license plate. Yes, it belonged to the woman; he knew the number.
The limping man straightened, wiping water from his face with his gloved left hand. Was Orange here? Had he used his wife’s car? But if so, why? Where was his car, the Pontiac? Had the two of them come up together? Were they both now inside the cabin? Or, for some reason, had his wife come here alone?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
He located the vegetation-entangled path leading to the point and began to make his way stealthily along it, his right hand still touching the Ruger Magnum in his overcoat pocket.
Andrea Kilduff sat bolt upright on the Army cot, clutching the heavy wool blankets tightly in both hands, her eyes suddenly opened wide like a frightened owl’s in the darkness.
There had been a sound—unidentifiable, yet distinctly loud—and it had come from just outside the bedroom window...
She sat there, trembling a little, listening. The rain pounded, pounded on the roof of the shack as if demanding entrance, and there was the steady whistling bay of the wind. But there was nothing else now, no other sounds. Andrea swept the blankets back impulsively and padded barefoot to the window, staring out at the gray-black water of the slough and beyond it at the indistinguishable shapes and shadows of the marshland. Nothing moved save for the grasses and the tall rushes under the elemental onslaught.
Andrea looked at her watch, squinting in the blackness. It was 5:11. She shivered and went back to the cot and lay down and pulled the blankets up under her chin. My imagination, she thought; now I’m creating prowlers in the middle of nowhere. Well, it serves me right, I suppose. I simply shouldn’t have come back here last night. I should have gone to Mona’s, in El Cerrito, or at least back into San Francisco to a motel; it wasn’t raining that hard and the traffic wasn’t that heavy on the freeway. I must be going a little dotty to have wanted to spend another night in this place.
She wrapped the blankets even more tightly around herself, mummifying her body against the shack’s chill. She closed her eyes and tried to regain the fragments of sleep—fitful and restless though it had been. But her mind was clear now, clear and alert; it wasn’t any use.
She lay there and wished Steve had been home last night, she wished she’d been able to talk to him and get it all said then and there; but now, at least, she knew from talking to Mrs. Yarborough that he hadn’t moved out, and there was always today. She would call him this morning; he was sure to be home this morning. Of course, she could drive to San Francisco and see him face to face, she could do that, but it was really out of the question. It was going to be difficult enough to say the words as it was, and if necessary, they could see one another at some later date—well no, now no, it was probably better if they just didn’t see one another at all, ever again.
Andrea closed her eyes and pictured Steve’s face in her mind, his face as it looked sleeping or in complete repose, like a child’s, like a very small and very handsome and very mischievous little boy. She felt little quivering sensations in her stomach, and opened her eyes again, and sighed, and thought: I don’t want to see him again, I really don’t, I have to adjust and that isn’t easy and won’t be easy and seeing him will only make matters worse, more difficult, so it’s better if I just call him today and get it all said and then I can go ...
Where?
Where will I go?
She shivered again. I have to go somewhere, she thought, I have to start over again somewhere. Oakland? Could I still get a job with Prudential Life? It’s been seven years since I’ve worked at anything except being a wife, but you never really forget any skills, that’s what they say, and secretarial work is a skill, so I shouldn’t have forgotten how to do it. But do I want to live in Oakland, in the Bay Area, close to Steve, knowing he’s nearby? No—but where else would I go? I don’t know where to go when I leave here, big cities like New York and Chicago frighten me, a little
town then, a little town somewhere, but I don’t think I’d like that either. Where will I go? I have to go somewhere. Mona and Dave? Well, maybe that’s it; yes, Mona and I have always been close and they have a large enough house, they won’t mind putting me up for a while, I can pay them room and board once I get a job, yes, that’s where I’ll go, at least for a while.
But she didn’t feel any better. The implications and the immense loneliness of the question Where will I go? had left her feeling small and empty and unwanted, friendless and loveless, naked and alone in a vast, populated wilderness. Lying there in the darkness, she was afraid again. The sooner she called Steve, the sooner she could leave Duckblind Slough for good. After she talked to him, she could call Mona and tell her about it and then she could go over to El Cerrito and they’d have a long, maudlin cry together. What she needed now was companionship, someone to talk to; when you’re alone for too long you start dwelling in the depths of gloom and depression, feeling sorry for yourself and looking at life through a glass darkly. Once she had a different perspective, things wouldn’t seem quite so—
There was the sound of a footfall on the porch outside.
Andrea sat up again, and her heart began to hammer violently. Was somebody out there? No, that was impossible; who would be out there, in the rain, at five o’clock in the morning? No, it was just her imagination, that’s all, just her—
The doorknob rattled.
Again.
Again.
Something smashed against the flimsy wood of the door.
Andrea threw the blankets back, stumbling off the cot to stand just inside the open doorway, hand held up to her mouth, her eyes bulging with consuming terror.
The door burst open.
It burst open, and a man stood framed in the doorway, framed in silhouette against the adumbral sky and the driving rain, a blackly faceless man with something held extended in one hand, something that gleamed dully in the pale, painted-rust glow from the fire in the stove.
Andrea began to scream.
15
He was the last one left.
Steve Kilduff, man alone.
He sat in the kitchen of the Twin Peaks apartment, and stared into the cup of black coffee. It was past dawn now, Thursday morning, and he could see, through the partially draped window-doors the length of the apartment, the gray sky with its dotting of gray-black clouds—tainted chunks of butter floating in tainted buttermilk.
And, as if superimposed on the bleak patina of the newborn day: Larry Drexel, lying on the cold wet grass—blackened and foully reeking and dead...
Himself, kneeling beside the charred body, now standing, now backing away...
The girl in the plastic raincoat, taking his place on the grass, burying her face in her hands...
Faces—featureless, oddly disembodied—watching the flames and staring at the dead man; pagan worshippers at the shrine of horror...
His car, ignition, brake, reverse, drive forward—going where?—going nowhere...
Police cars with flashing red dome-lights, and fire engines with high brightly yellow-white eyes...
Freeway lights, the same surrealistic montage of red and yellow, red and yellow, rushing forward, going nowhere as he was going nowhere, until fear sent him panicked onto an exit ramp to seek escape...
Interior shot: a cocktail lounge, locationless, nameless, dark, almost deserted, and the glass in his hand, trembling, full, and the glass in his hand, trembling, empty...
Dark, rain-swept, maze-like streets and roads and county highways, empty and strange, leading somewhere, yet leading nowhere, turn left, turn right, turn around...
Freeway again, an incalculable time later, the motion slower now, not so frightening, fewer yellows and fewer reds, and the rain had abated somewhat . . .
The dead, lonely streets of San Francisco under the first pale filtered light that signified the coming of dawn, daybreak of the morning after the final holocaust, and he was the lone survivor, the last man on earth, coming home...
He could see all of that vividly, but it was all in his mind, and in his mind, too, were the sounds, nightmare sounds of screaming and wailing sirens and driving rain and hurtling machines, and above it all were Larry Drexel’s brittle, dying, whispered words: “Helgerman . . . dead . . . long-time dead.”
He had been sitting there at the dinette for—how long? two hours? three?—sitting there and staring into the cold coffee, trying to keep from losing his grip on reality, from blowing his mind finally and irrevocably, feeling the awful pressure slowly but inexorably begin to lessen until, now, he knew a kind of unstable calm. He could look at the mental images, and hear the mental sounds, and there was no panic. He could be objective now, he could examine what had happened and determine its effect, he could be rational.
Helgerman is dead, he thought, it isn’t Helgerman; Drexel said it isn’t Helgerman and he was dying when he said it and there can be no disputation of the words of a dying man. So it isn’t Helgerman, Helgerman is dead, it isn’t Helgerman of the injured neck, Helgerman the wronged, Helgerman who had been struck down in the parking lot, Helgerman the only man it could be; it isn’t Helgerman. Then—who is it? Who pushed Jim Conradin off that cliff, and who set fire to Larry Drexel, and who murdered Cavalacci and Wykopf and Beauchamp? Who was waiting for him, Steve Kilduff, out there somewhere in the cold gray morning and in the dark black night? Who wanted him dead, as he had wanted and had made the others dead? What was the reason, the rationale, in a mind surely twisted?
Who?
And why?
But even more urgently important, what am I going to do now? Do I somehow seek out and somehow kill this now-nameless, now-faceless, non-existent but all-so-terribly-real madman—as Drexel would have done? Do I avenge the deaths of the others, and in so doing save my own life? Or do I go to the police, as I should have done in the very beginning? Or do I curl up in a tiny ball like a naked hedgehog and wait defenseless for whoever it is to come for me? Or do I run out of the state, out of the country, always looking over my shoulder, always trembling, always running?
What do I do?
The only thing I can do.
I’m not a killer, I never will be a killer, I could never find the man alone, and I would be as mad as he must be to believe I can. And I don’t want to die any more than any man wants to die; and the only place I could run—my eventual destination next week or next month or next year—would be off the deep end, right off the deep end. I have one alternative left, then. I go to the police. I go to Inspector Commac and Inspector Flagg and I tell them all about it, I tell them the whole story and I ask them to protect me and they will protect me and they will find the madman, whoever he is; I simply go to the police, and it’s over for me, it’s finished, no more fear, no more terror, it’s over.
But can I do it?
Can I go in there and pick up that telephone and dial that number and say the words that have to be said? Did what I saw and heard and smelled and was a part of last night—the horror of last night—somehow give me enough guts to do what I wasn’t able to do yesterday? Have I regained something of myself, a part of my manhood, that which enables a man to do what he must do?
Or is cowardice, once ingrained, not so easily dispelled?
Like a terminal malignancy, does it only spread until it consumes and destroys the being? And like that same malignancy, does it bring brief moments like these now—moments of painless calm, of commanding will, of hope—only to banish them, and return even more relentlessly destructive than before?
Kilduff got to his feet, pushing his chair back, and walked very slowly toward the hallway telephone. To find out if he was still a man.
It was just eight o’clock when Inspector Neal Commac stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. He walked along the quiet hallway and through a doorway marked with the sign: GENERAL WORKS DETAIL. It was a huge room with pale plaster walls and a reception desk on his immediate right and s
everal glass-fronted interrogation cubicles beyond an open archway. The detective bull pen contained several metal desks in no particular order, with typewriters on metal roll stands beside them.
Commac nodded a perfunctory good morning to the receptionist, turned to the right and then to the left to a doorway beyond, entering the bull pen. At the desk facing his, in the center of the room, Inspector Pat Flagg was just hanging up his telephone. Steam spiraled upward from a container of coffee at his elbow. He looked up as Commac took off his hat and sat down.
“Morning, Neal.”
“Pat.”
Flagg indicated a covered container identical to the one on his desk, resting on Commac’s blotter. “Brought you some coffee.”
“Thanks,” Commac said gratefully. “I could use some. It’s a bear out this morning.”
“We’re in for a hell of a winter.”
“Yeah.” Commac slipped the plastic cover off the container and tasted the coffee. He made a wry face and looked at Flagg over the rim of the container. “What’s on tap?”
“So far, just a talk with Mr. Brokaw on that attempted extortion in Sea Cliff.”
“Any special time?”
“After eleven.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and the DMV report came back on that ’59 Personnel Roster we got from the Bellevue Air Force Station.”
“Anything?”
Flagg picked up a printed form from his blotter. “Six with registered automobiles in California,” he said. “Conradin and Kilduff; Thomas Baird, North Hollywood; Lawrence Drexel, Los Gatos; Dale Emmerick, Redding; Victor Jobelli, Yreka.”
“You run those last four through R&I?”
“What I was doing when you came in.”
Commac nodded. “I wonder if we’ll turn anything there.”
“Is that a question, or are you thinking out loud?”
The Stalker Page 14